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Sunday December 22, 2013 5:05 AM

Despite years of progress for women in science, men continue to dominate scientific publishing
in nearly every country, according to new research in the journal
Nature.

Not only do men publish far more research than their female colleagues but papers with men as
the dominant author also are more likely to be cited by other researchers.

Analyzing the bylines on more than 5 million research papers published from 2008 to 2012, the
researchers determined that more than 70 percent of the authors were men. Nearly the same
percentage holds for lead authorship.

Such a gender gap is inconsistent with the ratio of male to female science students in most
countries, suggesting a “leaky pipeline” is at least part of the problem, said the paper’s author,
Cassidy R. Sugimoto, an information scientist at Indiana University.

In almost every country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, she said, “
women are out-matriculating men” in college, “and it’s nearly 50-50 for graduate programs.”

Noble gas molecules discovered in space

Atoms of noble gases such as helium, neon and argon — odorless, colorless, single-atom gases
with low chemical reactivity — have long been known to exist in outer space. But molecules
involving them have escaped detection.

Until now. European astronomers say they have detected noble gas molecules in space for the
first time.

Researchers at University College London detected mysterious emissions of light in the Crab
Nebula, which they determined were coming from spinning molecular ions of argon hydride from the
isotope argon-36.

Scientists had previously predicted that a supernova such as the Crab Nebula would produce
argon-36.